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EF0 tornado in Sarpy County, Nebraska

Tornado May 24, 2024 · Sarpy County, Nebraska

EF0
Rating
0.5 mi
Path length
60 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 60 yards (0.03 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This very brief tornado near Shadow Lake Elementary produced minor damage to homes and damaged numerous trees in the neighborhood. Some fences were also damaged. Peak winds in this tornado were estimated to be at 79 miles per hour. The maximum path width and average path width for this tornado were both 60 yards.

The wider storm

Upper-air analysis showed a trough over the northern Rockies the evening of May 23rd. That night, this trough ejected out into the central and northern Great Plains. At the surface, a low-pressure developed in western South Dakota. Extending south and southwest of this surface low into Colorado was a cold front. A secondary low-pressure center was noted in northwestern Kansas where the surface cold front intersected a dry line that extended south into western Texas.

Shortly after midnight, a line of severe thunderstorms along this cold front moved into the OAX CWA. From 05 UTC through 10 UTC, this line of storms brought widespread severe wind gusts up to 110 miles per hour and 17 spin-up tornadoes across eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. These storms continued to be severe and tornadic through the morning of the 24th, later being classified as a derecho.

Troughing over the western CONUS continued to bring southwesterly flow aloft the region even behind this first trough. By the evening of the 25th, another shortwave trough had amplified over the Great Basin and had shifted over the Rocky Mountains. Ahead of this disturbance, a low-pressure developed in northwest Kansas, with a warm front extending east-southeast across northern and eastern Kansas. The evening of the 25th, scattered strong to severe thunderstorms developed across this frontal zone in northern Kansas and generally tracked to the east-northeast. As such, scattered thunderstorms moved into southeast Nebraska after 9 PM CDT. While largely remaining below severe limits, severe straight-line winds were observed along the south and east side of the Omaha metro as a thunderstorm tracked from western Otoe into eastern Pottawattamie County. It was estimated wind gusts reached as high as 70 miles per hour with this storm, with power outages being reported due to the winds.

Began near La Vista (41.1230, -96.0430).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

11 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1181265. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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